I’ll Steal Everything and Escape - Chapter 7

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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7.
“Ha.”
A thrill shot through her fingertips. This was the hidden cave that wouldn’t be discovered for another three months. The space that Knight Tristan had stumbled upon when he tumbled off the cliff.
Elodie swallowed hard and took a step forward.
“Now, it’s mine.”
Her footsteps echoed ominously as she entered the cave.
After a short walk, she came upon a skeleton sprawled on the floor and a shallow pool. The skeleton lay face-down in a pitiful heap, draped in a threadbare rag. And beside it, a bag.
“I’m sorry, and thank you.”
Elodie offered a silent prayer, then claimed the new bag. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t brand new, but it was still perfectly serviceable.
“Well then, excuse me once more.”
Her impatient hands rifled through the skeleton’s tattered clothes.
‘It should be right here…’
Found it.
Five fingers closed tightly around a small orb tucked inside the skeleton’s robes. The chill against her palm raised goosebumps on her skin, yet her whole body burned with heat.
“Finally.”
This orb, no bigger than a fingernail, was the first goal Elodie had been chasing all along.
“The Essence of Enlightenment.”
This was the treasure that Shield Knight Tristan had obtained.
‘Tristan and Louise won’t join the party for another month.’
He had found a diary and a small crystal orb here. The first traces of another person she had encountered on this island. Tristan had opened the diary without a second thought.
[That skeleton was a great mage. You’ll understand once you read the diary, but, ah, Your Highness. Please, look first!]
After reading the diary in the cave, Tristan promptly swallowed the orb whole. Anyone ordinary would have at least hesitated, but Tristan Plant was a knight whose brain was entirely made of muscle and Robert.
[Didn’t that mage leave everything he had to the next survivor?]
[…So you ate it?]
[Then, like this! I’ve succeeded!]
Even without memory magic, Elodie could never forget that day. No, everyone present must have felt the same.
Deudeuk.
Tristan’s thick forearm froze solid, turning white.
[Tristan! This is—!]
[Robert, this is an absolutely unbelievable thing!]
After consuming the ‘Essence of Enlightenment’ described in the diary, Tristan Plant acquired Ice Freezing Magic. Not bloodline magic, but a new kind of magic, acquired after birth!
“You two already had everything before, so now it’s finally my turn.”
Her shimmering violet eyes fixed on the tiny orb.
A treasure of immense value that could not be found anywhere in the Empire. A special elixir in which those who had mastered magic condensed their enlightenment.
‘With this alone, I too could…!’
Gulp.
Elodie swallowed the orb. The Essence of Enlightenment melted smoothly away. She slowly closed her eyes.
Then,
A blue aura began to pour out of her body. A fierce wind whipped through the cave, and her pale blonde hair fluttered up and down. A vein bulged on the forehead of the ambitious thief.
‘Tristan Plant, you liar.’
Elodie groaned. Or maybe she screamed, she couldn’t tell.
‘You never said it would hurt this much!’
An agonizing pain surged through her, as though every drop of blood in her body were being replaced.
* * *
Exhausted, Elodie spent the night in the cave. She had been confident she could return before sunset once she obtained Ice Freezing Magic. When she came to, it was the middle of the night.
Ppiyo, ppiyo, ppiyoooo.
The cheerful morning greetings of the strange birds drifted in. The thief, roused from shallow sleep, hung her head. Her face bore clear traces of tears.
“Hic.”
Tears welled up again.
Yesterday, today, Elodie wailed in front of the skeleton. She truly, genuinely wailed.
“Waaah. Hic. Hu-uuuh.”
Her lips trembled. Was it because she harbored a resentful heart? Or because the magic had not gone to its rightful owner?
“Why can’t I do it, why?!”
Tristan had mastered Ice Freezing Magic, but Elodie had not.
She had only suffered from having to take in the immense mana. No matter how much she gestured through the night or chanted every spell she could think of, nothing sprouted from her fingertips.
“Hic. Ice, oh… it hurts, hng… Form a barrier in front of me… Please, form a barrier in front of me!”
The magic that Tristan had summoned, raising a reliable Ice Wall whenever he spoke, why on earth was it denied to Elodie?
“Aaaaargh!”
The thief wept mournfully for a full hour after the sun had risen.
“…So, you see, that’s what happened to me. Do you have any idea how much I suffered?”
Elodie sniffed, propping the fallen skull back up as she poured out her frustration.
“Well, I suppose. Even you, who was supposedly a fairly successful mage, ended up like this.”
The thief opened the skeleton’s diary with a damp expression.
Two months since I fell onto this place. I’ve lost every companion who arrived with me. Is this where it ends…?
Her slender fingers flipped briskly through the pitiful diary. It’s the same as my previous life. Nothing has changed at all.
“Why, of all things!”
Elodie stomped her foot and flung the diary aside. Flap.
I am Alan de Fleur, the mage who shook the world with Ice Freezing Magic. I have sealed my final strength into the Essence of Enlightenment. To whoever reads this diary, I leave you everything I have.
Please survive. And if you can, at least bury this ring in my homeland.
Robert and the others from her previous life were stunned.
[To pass down magic this way was something only people from the Magic Kingdom, two hundred years ago at the very least, could have done……!]
[He must have been an incredibly powerful mage!]
…Well, the problem is that this incredibly powerful mage is lying dead right here. Elodie let out a sigh deep enough to sink the ground beneath her, then got to her feet.
“Pull yourself together. We don’t have time.”
Having failed once, she needed to set her next goal faster. According to the plan, she had intended to go looking for the necklace Silvia had obtained…….
“Everything went sideways because I couldn’t use Ice Freezing Magic.”
Elodie pressed down firmly on her eyelid, which had swollen to twice its size. For now, I’ll go back and get a proper night’s sleep.
“I need time to recover my spirits…….
* * *
“Whew. Quinowolves weren’t the end of it. Things are serious.”
“…Indeed. This is no ordinary island.”
“Did you see that bear? It’s scary! It looked really terrifying!”
“From now on, let’s call that beast the Big-Footed Fire Bear.”
Robert waved a hand briskly at the tearful Silvia, then dropped down onto the ground with a thump.
It had been five days since they fell onto the island. They checked the direction of the sea where they had landed every day, but not once had they sensed any trace of magic. Stefan hunched over and pouted his lips.
“I’m starving to death. Wolf meat has no flavor at all. Silvia, isn’t there some other way to cook it?”
“How would I know that? I’ve never cooked before either!”
Robert let out a small sigh. The others were growing more irritable by the day. He had said he would keep his composure as the prince, but he was slowly running out of strength himself. …The wolf meat had certainly been tough, too.
“Your Highness! Let’s go deeper inside!”
Stefan swept his thick blond hair back.
“It’s a forest, after all. There must be something edible further in. Something other than those small, bitter berries!”
“Hah.”
Robert’s red eyebrows twitched. It was something he had worried over too, but…
“Even if we go in and find something, there’s a problem.”
“P-problem?”
“We’d need to confirm whether whatever we find is actually edible. If it’s poisonous, we’ll be in serious trouble.”
Ugh, Stefan hunched his shoulders tight.
“So we just starve, then? Even the quinowolves are starting to disappear already…”
“Well, how about we make fishing rods?”
“…Do you even know how to make one?”
“Eh? Me?”
The prince pressed down on his brow, which kept twisting further out of shape, then turned his head away. A dense canopy of trees. A vast sky.
Perhaps he was tired, because the words slipped out before he could stop them.
“…If Elodie Pontaine were here, she might have been able to tell the poisonous mushrooms apart.”
“……”
This time, everyone clamped their mouths shut like clams.
* * *
Days Until Death: D-512
Crunch. Crunch.
Back at the Tree of Rest, Elodie gnashed her teeth as she chewed on strawberries. A thin trickle of ominous red juice ran down the corner of her mouth.
“I’m going to eat them all.”
The thief resolved once more. Every stroke of luck her companions had found, she would gobble up without leaving a single bit behind!
“All the hidden magic is mine from now on……”
If I find ten, surely I can use at least one of them! The strawberries squished in her grip with a squelch, as if crying out. Today, I really ought to eat well.
Elodie stuffed a fistful of white mushrooms into her mouth and chewed.
“White cap mushrooms really are best grilled, you know.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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